Friday, May 01, 2015

James Baldwin: greatest ever learning theorist you’ve never heard of

You’ve
probably never heard of James Mark Baldwin. Yet, he may be the greatest learning
theorist that ever lived. A 19th century psychologist, he introduced
what is called the ‘Baldwin Effect’ into evolutionary theory. The idea is that
learned behavior, and not just environment and genes, influences the direction
and rate of the evolution of psychological and physical traits. The Baldwin
effect places ‘learning’ on a larger theoretical canvas, lying at the heart of
evolutionary theory. It is no longer just a cognitive ability, albeit a complex
one with many different systems of memory involved, but a feature that defines
the very success of our species. This is a profound and radical idea.

Note that
this is not Lamarckism, as it does not claim that acquired characteristics
are passed on genetically, only that the offspring of a adaptive trait
(physical or psychological) may be genetically better at learning. This creates
the opportunity, as it creates the conditions and successful population
survival, for standard selection to take place.

Just as
Darwin and Wallace struck upon the same idea at the same time, Baldwin had two
Wallaces in Henry
Fairfield Osborne and Conwy
Lloyd Morgan. All three published the same ideas in 1895-96.

Growth of Baldwin effect

It has some
impressive supporters include Aldous Huxley, Hinton, Nowlan, Dennett and
Deacon. Evolutionary psychology in paeticular has had a profound influence on the
resurrection of the idea. Daniel Dennett is one theorist who posits the Baldwin
idea that learned behavior, especially sustainable innovative behaviours, if it
is captured in substantial genetic frequency, can act as what he calls a ‘sky
crane’ in evolution. Hinton and
Nolan revived the idea in How Learning Can Guide Evolution (1987) and Richard
Richards who published Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of
Mind and Behaviour, in the same year. They generated enough interest for John
Maynard Keynes. to support them in a article published in Nature in the same
year. But it is
Daniel Dennett who has done most to popularize the idea in Consciousness
Explained (1991) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995).Weber and
Depew have since published an excellent explanatory and supportive book Evolution
and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered (2007).

Deacon proposed that the Baldwin effect accounts for the rapid
evolution of the mind and language. As Wittgenstein showed, a private language makes
no sense as meaning is use. As soon as a small number start and continue to
develop language skills it confers significant adaptive advantage and confers a
real runaway advantage to the users. This ability to learn new skills may be
the key to our species having moved beyond fixed, genetic determinism.

More than just language, adaption to new environments,
responding to climatic and food pressures and other changes that require
quicker adaption through selected learning, may have played a role in the rapid
success of Homo Sapiens. Dennett proposes the actual creation of selective
pressure on others by sustained learned behaviour. This is where it gets interesting
for technology.

Technology

Significant advantages could have been through the relatively
rapid learned ability to create technology, namely the production of tools.
Technology scales the ability of its producers, owners and users to avoid
predation, become better predators through hunting and fishing, protect its
owners against climate (needles, cloth, clothes), use fire and preserve food. Technology is the real success, especially
technology that allowed us to create social groups in which learning, in the
sense of teaching and learning, could thrive.

Homo Technus

My favoured flavour of the Baldwin effect, is the runaway
success of learning to make things, namely the production of tools and
technology. This could be the cardinal, causal factor that the Baldwin effect
bestowed on our species. Note that our species Homo Sapiens, was not the only
species to thrive on the success of tools and technology, all other humanoid
species did so, only not with the same levels of success. The history of tool
making shadows the history of our species and gives us a window into the
development of consciousness. The trail of stone tools is often as significant
as the fossil bone evidence. Our advantage over our nearest rivals, the
Neanderthals, seems to have been based on superior minds, tools and technology.

One could go further and claim that learning, especially the development of cognitive
systems such as episodic memory, gave the production and use of technology a privileged
status. In its current phase, technology itself, through various network
effects and machine learning has taken this to new levels. It may even
transcend our very notion of what we currently see as intrinsically human.

Technology as tools, machines and automation may be the most important factor in our 'success' as a species. It has taken us to every corner of the globe, the depths of the seas, to the moon and beyond.

Conclusion

In an interesting twist of fate Hinton and Nowlan claim to
have demonstrated, through computer technology (simulations) that learning
could shape evolution. The Baldwin effect, may, through its own efficacy have created
the technological conditions for its own proof. The brain, through
consciousness, may have created a fast developing structure that in turn
accelerates learning and thus evolution.